270 AMERICAN GAME. 
salt and black pepper guantam suff., a dozen hard-boiled 
eggs, and a pint of scalding-hot port wine poured in just 
before you serve up. 
What you say is perfectly true, my dear madam, 
cooked in that manner an old India rubber shoe és good; 
not only would be, but zs. But you’d better believe it, 
a Bittern is a great deal better. If you don’t believe 
me, try the Bittern, and then if you prefer it, adhere to 
the shoe. 
- But now to quit his edible qualifications and turn to 
his personal appearance, habits of life, and location, and 
other characteristics, we will say of him, in the words of 
Wilson, that eloquent pioneer in the natural history of 
America, that the American Bittern, whom it pleases 
the Count de Buffon to designate as Le Butor dela Baye 
de Hudson, “is another nocturnal species, common to 
all our sea and river marshes, though nowhere nume- 
rous. It rests all day. among the reeds and rushes, and, 
unless disturbed, flies and feeds only during the night. 
In some places it is called the Indian Hen; on the sea- 
coast of New Jersey it is known by the name of dunka- 
doo, a word probably imitative of its common note. 
They are also found in the interior, having myself killed 
one at the inlet of the Seneca Lake, in October. It 
utters at times, a hollow, guttural note among the reeds, 
but has nothing of that loud, booming sound for which 
the European Bittern is so remarkable. This circum- 
stance, with its great inferiority of size, and difference of 
